ABOUT 12 YEARS AGO, Clorox Co. executive Tom Johnson was offered a transfer to London. “I said, ‘Terrific. I have a partner and he’s going to go with me. You have to figure out how to arrange it’.” The Oakland-based company did, and today Johnson is Clorox’s controller.

It’s an example, Johnson says, of how he feels at the company: free to be who he is — a gay man.

Johnson is not alone. Despite the stereotyped image of straitlaced corporate cultures at large firms like Clorox, more and more such companies are expanding benefits and protections for their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, led in many instances by Bay Area-based businesses.

More than half of Fortune 500 companies now offer domestic partner benefits to employees, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign.

Of the 138 companies with a perfectscore on that organization’s Corporate Equality Index (www.hrc.org/cei), a report rating U.S. companies on the policies and benefits they offer LGBT employees, 24 are in the Bay Area.

That 138 figure is up from 101 in 2005, and has grown tenfold in four years, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Many see recent gains in gay marriage rights as having sparked in the Bay Area in February 2004 when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom authorized a series of same-sex marriages.

The marriages were subsequently invalidated, but a wave of activity followed nationally, such as the New Jersey Supreme Court’s October conclusion that denying equal legal rights and civil protections to same-sex couples is unacceptable and unconstitutional.

A more productive and satisfied work force results when employers treat same-sex couples equally with heterosexual couples, according to a recent study by the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. (See related story.)

“It’s important to be open at work. Being in the closet is confining,” said Johnson of Clorox, which employs 7,600 people worldwide. He heads up the Clorox Pride employee resource group that the maker of consumer goods such as Glad bags started in June. About 50 people participate in the group.

The group’s leader often funnels comments from the members back to management to influence key policy decisions, Johnson said.

To get a perfect Equality Index score, a company must have a written nondiscrimination policy covering sexual orientation; support transgender employees with written non-discrimination policies; offer health insurance, bereavement and family leave policies to families with same-sex partners; and have LGBT employee groups, among other things.

Like Clorox, Chevron got a perfect score this year. Chevron has 59,000 employees.

The company’s Pride Network, founded in 1991, has 500 members, according to Mike Craig, its president. Craig is a program coordinator for Global Information Link, the company’s standardized desktop and office system.

“The group got started, of course, in the Bay Area,” said Craig, acknowledging the area’s leadership role. Over the years, the group grew until “we have members from London to Pakistan,” said Craig, who is now based in Houston.

The network raised $75,000 this year in San Francisco’s AIDS Walk, Craig said. The group also worked to add gender identity to the company’s nondiscrimination policy.

Craig came out at Chevron with the encouragement of a fellow employee, Susan Guerrero, co-chair of the Houston Gay Pride parade.

“She said, ‘You need to be a more active member of the Pride Network,'” Craig said. “That’s what did it. The strong arm of the lesbian.”

Both Chevron and Clorox have a number of other diversity support groups, as does Pleasanton-based grocer Safeway Inc.

“We have a networking group for gay and lesbian employees, as we do with other groups,” said Jennifer Webber of Safeway. David Pallone, who was an umpire with Major League Baseball for 10 years, in October discussed his book “Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball,” which, Webber said, “gives a look at baseball through the eyes of a gay man.”

The company, which employs some 201,000 people, also has groups for women, Asians, African Americans and Hispanics, Webber said.

Sexual orientation has been a formal part of the company’s definition of diversity for more than 10 years, Webber said.

Corporate Safeway employees are offered domestic partner benefits in California and these benefits will be offered to corporate employees nationally starting next year.

South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc. flies the flag of gay pride — literally. The drugmaker has been flying the rainbow flag associated with LGBT rights at its headquarters every year during Pride month since 1997.

“In 1994, Genentech began offering domestic partner benefits for unmarried same-sex and heterosexual couples,” Kelli Wilder of Genentech said in an e-mail. “Since 1996, Genentech has advertised in LGBT publications to help with recruiting efforts.”

The company, which develops and manufactures cancer-fighting drugs, has a number of employee-led and company-sponsored groups, including Out & Equal.

This group has events and weekly meetings and promotes itself with its Web site on the company intranet, Wilder said. Genentech employs about 10,565 people.

A San Francisco Human Rights Commission official agreed that the Bay Area has led the nation in expanding benefits and protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees.

For one thing, in 1997, the City and County of San Francisco began requiring companies doing business with them to offer the same benefits to employees with domestic partners as those with spouses. “There are 16,000 city contractors in all parts of the county,” said Larry Brinkin, a senior manager at the commission. Requiring them to provide such benefits “created a ripple effect,” he said.

“San Francisco was the first to say, ‘If you want to do business with the city and county, you must provide the same benefits to employees with domestic partners,'” said Greg Hammond, general counsel for San Leandro-based TriNet, which provides outsourced human resources services to businesses nationwide, serving more than 23,000 employees.

“When you live in a bellwether region in a bellwether state, you get a progressive viewpoint,” Hammond said. “We service employees in all 50 states. We bring the cultural and legal environment of the Bay Area to them.”

On a national basis, “If you don’t give benefits to domestic partnerships, you don’t do business with TriNet,” Hammond said.

“When an employer provides workplace equality, it makes them an attractive place for everyone. Most people figure, ‘If they treat others fairly, they will treat me fairly,'” Brinkin said.

“We want to empower (LGBT) employees at Clorox,” said Erby Foster, the company’s director of diversity and inclusion. “It takes a lot of energy to stay in the closet. We hope to bring a new energy to Clorox and help these employees to feel more connected to the company.”

It’s not just a matter of tolerance,” Johnson said. “It’s a matter of feeling welcome.”

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